24 Declassified: 06 - Chaos Theory

by John Whitman

  “Well, the simplest way would be to lower the level of barbiturate. You can do that with a gastric lavage and time.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t have time. What if it were an emergency?”

  The doctor looked at him as though he were an idiot. “It’s not an emergency. He’s on life support, he’s stable.”

  Jack had no more time for subtlety. He pulled Peter’s gun from under his shirt and said, “Imagine it’s an emergency because I’m pointing a gun at you, Doctor. Now what would you do?”

  Dr. Czikowlis gasped and looked around as though the security guard might suddenly appear.

  “Stay calm,” Jack said soothingly. “I don’t want to hurt you or him. I just need to ask him a question. I think someone poisoned him. Get him awake. Now.”

  Dr. Czikowlis hesitated. She was not particularly heroic, but she was responsible for this patient, and she did not like demands being made on her. Still, her mind went instantly to the treatment. Massive amphetamine injection. Prep nitropresside to prevent cardiac arrest. She might be able to wake him up without causing much damage to him.

  “Now,” he repeated, a little more threateningly. The doctor weighed the risk versus the reward and then went to the cabinet.

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  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 A.M. AND 8 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  7:00 A.M. PST Marriott Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles

  The phone rang shrilly, jolting Mark Kendall out of his sleep. He sat up, his huge heart pounding in his chest. He looked around, befuddled by the confusion of deep sleep. His sense of himself and his place came back to him as the phone continued incessantly. Hotel. Saturday. Fight day.

  “Hello?” he said in a rough morning voice.

  “Hey.” That soft voice, that understanding voice. He loved that voice.

  “Hiya, babe,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “How are you ladies doing?” His eyes focused and he checked the clock. It’d be about ten in the morning back home.

  “Oh, you know,” she said breezily, “up all night at the clubs, breakfast at the Waffle House, then appointments at the hair salon. It’s a full life.”

  He laughed. She always made him laugh. But then he heard crying in the background, crying that pierced him and dug into his gut. “How’s she doing?”

  “The same,” his wife said, suddenly weary. “She can’t stop crying, poor thing. I took her back to Dr. Krasnoff, but he says we can’t use any more pain medication. We might have to put her back in the hospital.”

  Mark grumbled, “They don’t help her there, either.”

  He heard his baby wail even louder in the background, as his wife said, “She needs that operation.” “I know. She’ll get it,” he vowed. “Markie, I just wanted to call and say I hope you

  know, you’re my, my champion, either way. I hope you know that.”

  He smiled, big and boyish in that way only she could make him feel. “I love you. And I’m going to get her what she needs. I promise.”

  “I’m going to watch tonight.” “You are?” She had never come to his fights, never even watched them on pay-per-view. “It’s your big comeback. I figured it’s time I worked up the guts. You’re going to do great.”

  He looked at the envelope the bald little man had given him. He hadn’t opened it. But he hadn’t thrown it away, either.

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  “Like I said, I promise. I’m getting her what she needs. No matter what.”

  7:16 A.M. PST UCLA Medical Center

  Before Dr. Czikowlis could slide the syringe out of the IV shunt, Ryan Chappelle’s chest heaved and his heart rate soared, turning the monitors into panic buttons. His eyes popped open and he gasped like a man coming up for air.

  “Jesus, it worked,” the doctor said. “You know what this means?”

  “Yeah, I can talk to him,” Jack said.

  “It doesn’t make sense. The tests came back negative. No barbiturates in his system. This shouldn’t work.”

  Jack leaned over Chapelle, but said to the doctor, “Someone poisoned him. That same person could have switched the test results. Chappelle!” He tapped Chappelle’s thin, pale cheek. “Chappelle, it’s Bauer!”

  Chappelle turned toward Jack, but his eyes were unfixed. “Chappelle!” Jack called out again.

  “Bauer,” Chappelle whispered, his voice barely audible. “Should be . . . jail.”

  “Yeah, I know. I need help. I need you. I need your Zapata resource!”

  Chappelle breathed a long but shallow, rattling breath.

  “Your Zapata resource. I need her now.”

  Chappelle blinked several times before saying breathlessly, “Gerwehr. Talia Ger . . . wehr . . . RAND.”

  “Gerwehr,” Jack said, his shoulders releasing enormous amounts of tension. “Thanks. Thanks, Chappelle.”

  7:24 A.M. PST Beverly Wilshire Hotel

  Martin Webb woke up without the alarm, but feeling heavy. Old men didn’t sleep, but they needed to. It was after ten o’clock on the East Coast. That’s what he got for staying up till all hours watching sports on television. He sat up and put his feet down, slowly turning his feet in circles the way his physical therapist had told him to, trying to get the circulation going in his feet. His steel-trap mind recalled clearly training camp from his college football days, but to his feet they were a distant memory.

  Martin put his glasses on and checked the clock. “Oh, damn it, old man,” he said aloud, “all you’ve got left is your brain and it’s turning to mush. That call is right now.”

  Martin dialed the front desk and had them put a call through to the Secretary of the Treasury at his home.

  “Lou, it’s Marty. Is now still good?”

  Across the country, Lou Friedman sat in the leisure

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  chair in his den, but he was anything but leisurely. As Treasury Secretary, he was ostensibly responsible for the country’s coffers, and those coffers were dangerously low, while the debt to other nations was alarmingly high.

  “No time like the present,” he replied glibly. He’d known Marty Webb since college. A good man, maybe the best man to lead them out of this mess. “So what do you think of the President’s stimulus package?”

  “Malarkey,” Webb said. “More like a favor to big business than a goose to the economy. I’d rather see more effort put into lowering the value of the dollar overseas.”

  He and Marty had gone through this debate before. “You know that’s going to mean less revenue for businessmen here.”

  “It’ll mean more volume,” Webb replied, as weary of the debate on his side as Friedman was. “We’re not talking about benefiting a few of your political friends. We’re talking about real stimulus. More volume means more revenue overall, including shipping, packaging, lower prices for imported goods.”

  Friedman sighed. “Marty. You and I both know that a word from you is going to do more to relax Wall Street and the consumers than anything else. The plan isn’t all that important. Your endorsement is everything. “

  Webb caught the whiff of politics. It was unavoidable, of course. But Martin had become the Fed Chairman because he saw it as a way to serve the public good without prostituting himself too badly.

  Of course, his distaste for politics didn’t mean he was politically inept. He knew that Lou was giving him an opening.

  “I know the papers will print what I say,” he said coyly.

  Lou chuckled. “I was hoping you’d go on the Sunday shows. We could get you on Meet the Press, anything else you were willing to do.”

  “And say what?” Webb asked, getting to the point.

  “And say you think the President’s stimulus package will be just the thing to return us to the robust economy we all expect, especially the tax incentives . . .”

  “Hmm.”

  “. . . and the devaluation of the dollar to stimulate overseas trade.”

  Martin hesitated, letting thi
n white noise fill the void between them. This price was a bit higher than he wanted to pay, but he wasn’t sure the country could wait much longer. The economy needed a plan and, more importantly, it needed the confidence of the citizenry to keep the consumer engines churning. And Martin Webb knew, without ego, that his word would go a long way toward bolstering that confidence.

  “The devaluation process first, Lou,” he said finally.

  Lou let out an audible sigh of relief. “Deal. You’re going to save us, Marty. I know it.”

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  7:39 A.M. PST West Los Angeles

  Jack jogged back to the parking lot where he’d dumped Peter’s car. His feet hurt—he’d been on the run for hours. The sun was fully up now, which reinvigorated him a little, but he hadn’t been this exhausted in quite some time. He was going to steal his third car since breaking out of jail; he was getting good at it. This one was a green Chrysler Sebring. He chose it from the monthly parking area, hot-wired it, and drove it out, paying the full days’ fare because he didn’t have the ticket.

  Talia Gerwehr’s address was listed and not far away. He headed for Beverly Glen.

  7:46 A.M. PST Larchmont Area

  Zapata sat at a small, circular café table outside the Starbucks on Larchmont Avenue, nursing a caramel machiatto. He had a decadent habit of patronizing Starbucks. He pretended to himself that he was getting to know his enemy, but the truth was, he simply enjoyed it. He doubted it would survive his vision of anarchy, and he wanted to savor the elegant process that created elegant coffee on an assembly line before it disappeared for good.

  And of course he liked to watch the people. At this moment in time, this Starbucks was the center of a ripple reaching out, touching all their lives. Coffee or not, he would have loved to have blown up that coffee shop, just to watch the disruption in the pattern of their existence.

  He gave some thought to his larger plan. The ability of the Federal authorities to get so close was still disturbing, but he could see the reasons clearly, and that comforted him because it meant he could fix the problem.

  Losing Aguillar was a setback, but a minor one. The real question was whether his goal could still be accomplished. After due consideration, he did not see why it could not succeed. The authorities could know nothing. Vanowen knew nothing of his real plan, and Ramirez knew less than nothing. Aguillar’s knowledge had died with him. Besides, his plan had already been set in motion. There was no reason to stop it, even if Zapata wanted to leave town.

  But he was not ready to leave. He wanted to see the ripples.

  As he finished the last sip of coffee, a gold Lexus pulled up to a metered space near the Starbucks. A blond man got out and began searching. Casually, Zapata stood and walked over to him, holding out a latte he had been saving. “Kyle,” he said.

  The blond man looked at him uncertainly at first, then recognized him. “That’s a good look on you,” he said with a laugh.

  “So I’ve been told. Do you mind if I spend the day at your house?”

  They got in the Lexus and Kyle said, “As long as you promise me the kind of chaos I can profit from, you can stay there all week.”

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  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 9 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  8:00 A.M. PST UCLA Medical Center

  Nina reached the elevator at the same time as a John Wayne look-alike. “Ma’am,” he said, motioning her to enter first. She did and then turned, watching his enormous shoulders fill the elevator doors, which closed behind him. She checked the elevator’s weight capacity.

  He grinned. “They grow ’em big down in the Gulf. But I just think light and the elevator does the rest.”

  He reached for the fifth floor button and saw that she’d already pushed it. He smiled at her again, but this time his look showed that he was assessing her.

  Finally, he stuck out his beefy hand. “Dan Pascal,

  U.S. Marshal.” With his left hand he brushed back his brown jacket, showing the badge now attached to his belt.

  “Nina Myers, Counter Terrorist Unit,” she replied. “I guess we’re headed the same way.”

  Pascal chuckled. The sound was a low rumble in his chest. “Truth to tell, ma’am, I don’t know which way I’m headed, your boy’s got me turned around every which way.”

  “He does that to everybody.”

  The elevator opened on the fifth floor and they walked together to Ryan Chappelle’s room. Several uniforms were already there, including the one who’d been handcuffed to the sink. There was also a woman in a doctor’s coat—Nina had been told her name was “Chick-ow-liss” but you wouldn’t have known it by looking at her name tag. And there was Chappelle, lying unconscious on the hospital bed. Nina decided that he looked more lifelike than she’d ever seen him.

  Nina let the U.S. Marshal introduce himself. He had a down-home quality that put people at ease, and he clearly used it to his advantage.

  “I know you’ve already given your statement to these fellas,” Pascal said, “but could you run through it again, just ’cause I’m slow.”

  Dr. Czikowlis looked bent, but not broken, as she told her story. The fact of having a gun pointed at her had clearly unnerved her, but there was no fear in her voice when she described Jack himself. She seemed to regard him with a certain amount of respect for hav

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  ing done what he’d done. Nina thought begrudgingly,

  He does that to everybody, too.

  Aloud, she said, “So Chappelle was awake?”

  Dr. Czikowlis nodded. “He’ll wake up again. Now he’s just asleep, unconscious. Not a coma, though. That man was right. He was a victim of barbiturate poisoning. But the test came back negative, so—”

  “There was a mistake on the tests?” Nina asked.

  Pascal shifted back onto his heels, clearly content to let her take the lead and ask the aggressive questions.

  “Well, they were wrong. The man with the gun said he thought the test had been switched, but I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Tell me again what Mr. Chappelle said when he was awake.”

  “He wasn’t awake for long. The man asked him about his Zapata resource. He seemed really desperate to get it.”

  Nina’s eyes flickered, the only outward sign of her complete inward shock. “What was that he asked again?” she said casually.

  “Zapata,” Czikowlis replied certainly. “He said ‘Zapata resource.’ Mr. Chappelle whispered a name, and then he collapsed. The man with the gun locked me in the bathroom and left.”

  “What was the name Mr. Chappelle whispered?”

  The doctor shook her head. “He was barely conscious. It was Taylor Gerber, Talia Gerber, something like that.”

  Nina nodded. “I see. Hard to hear. Is Mr. Chappelle going to recover?”

  “Oh yes, now he will. He’ll sleep for a few more hours, though.” Nina nodded again and walked out, aware that Pascal was following her. “Ms. Myers, I’m hoping you’re going to share the information you’ve got,” he said over her shoulder. Nina stopped at the elevators. “You just got all the information I did.”

  Pascal smiled a smile big as the delta. “The information she gave. But not the information in your head.”

  Nina hesitated. There was a lot she could tell Pascal, if she’d wanted to. Tintfass was alive. Jack was not a murderer. But she didn’t know the whole story yet, and if there’s one thing she did know, it was that you didn’t show your cards until your hand was complete. She stepped into the elevator, but not far enough to let him on. “I wish I could help you, Marshal.”

  “Deputy Marshal,” he corrected as the doors closed, “and I’ll find out one way or the other.”

  8:13 A.M. PST Beverly Glen

  Beverly Glen was a small West L.A. neighborhood of pretty houses bordered by upscale Brentwood on the west and the 405 Freeway on the east, one of the few enclaves of affordable (by L.A. sta
ndards) housing on the West Side.

  Jack parked the stolen Pathfinder on Church Street

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  and walked around the block to the street that paralleled Talia Gerwehr’s east-west street, but one block north. He’d driven through the neighborhood twice already, looking for anything suspicious, but if the house was being watched, the watchers were good and he couldn’t find them. To make their job harder, he walked to the house just north of the Gerwehr place, so that the two backyards abutted. Casually, Jack walked up the driveway to that house, then turned to the side gate and walked down the side yard. He passed several windows without looking in. He strode purposefully across the backyard—a small open space with a red oak hot tub that had been fashionable in the early eighties—reached the fence, and hopped over.

  Talia Gerwehr’s backyard was small and landscaped with curving lines of brick and recently laid sod, dominated by a grand old oak tree. The elegant yard communicated with the house through a set of richly varnished French doors. Jack saw movement within the house, guessed that whatever alarm there was had been turned off, and popped a hand through one of the French doors’ glass frames. He reached in and had the door opened before the sound of tinkling glass faded.

  Talia Gerwehr came around the corner with a cordless phone in her hand and a quizzical look on her face. When she saw the gun in Jack’s hand, her look changed to shock.

  At the same moment, her phone rang. “Hello?” she said, trying to take it all in at once. “Yes, this is Talia Gerwehr. What, um, what can I do for you, Marshal?” She looked at Jack Bauer, and then at the gun again, as she listened to the caller. “Um, no, I understand. I don’t know why that would be. But everything’s fine here. I was just leaving for my office, though, would you, would you rather send someone there? All right, fine.” She hung up the phone and then said, “So you must be Jack Bauer.”

  8:27 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  They were waiting for Nina when she rushed into the conference room, having broken innumerable traffic laws to get back to headquarters. Tony was there, and Henderson and a number of other field agents, along with half the analytical staff.